The Obama slogan for 2012 is in and it’s “Forward.” The left has always been enamored of “Forwardism” or “Progressivism” which mean much the same thing. Before MSNBC had “Lean Forward,” Mao had the Great Leap Forward, which killed some 40 million people, far more people than MSNBC can ever dream of tuning in to their programs.

When Lenin wanted to **noallow** his own newspaper, he called it, “Vperod” or “Forward.” The name has popped up on the mastheads of left-wing newspapers across the world. It’s “Vorwarts” in Germany, “Voorwarts” in the Netherlands and “Ila al-Amam” in the Arab world. Back in New York it’s “The Forward.”

There are any number of left-wing political parties who have named themselves “Forward”, including the Forward Communist Party of India, Kadima, the left-wing opposition party in Israel, and Vperod, a Russian political party that split off from the Socialist Resistance on account of the latter not being radical enough.

Picking “Forward” as his campaign slogan puts Obama in good company with Lenin and Mao, and it sounds positive until you stop and realize that it’s meant more as an order than a suggestion. There’s a reason leftist newspapers with that name add an exclamation mark at the end of it. It’s not a proposal, it’s a command. Lean forward, march forward, live forward and then die forward. We’ve burned the bridges, run up the deficit and trashed the economy so there’s no going back.

An old Soviet era joke told the story of the wife of a Communist leader who upon hearing that her husband had developed a progressive paralysis, clapped her hands and exclaimed that at least it was progressive. That is the underlying message of “Forward” to voters: the country may be paralyzed, but at least it’s a progressive paralysis which leaves us unable to move our heads and stop leaning forward.

That may be why it remains a popular campaign slogan among desperate left of center candidates. When Adlai Stevenson, dean of the liberal eggheads, ran in 1952, the campaign buttons read, “Forward with Stevenson.” The country chose to go backward instead with Eisenhower winning by a landslide.

Tony Blair ran for his third term with the slogan, “Britain, forward, not back,” which despite its clumsiness did conclusively explain that “Forward” as a campaign slogan means there’s no going back. However Blair forgot to tell voters that this referred to his immigration policy which helped create Broken Britain.

In this forward-looking Britain, the police are being trained to look for signs of sorcery among immigrants after children have been murdered on suspicion that they might be witches. The last woman to be executed on witchcraft charges in the area was back in 1727, but now the UK is back in the witch hunting business or the hunting witchhunters business as the case may be. That’s not to mention the Islamic female genital mutilation business, which is also booming as part of Britain’s forward march into the 7th century.

Had Blair been a touch more honest, the slogan would have been, “Britain, so forward, it’s backward.” Much like having a mind so open your brains fall out, that is one of the dangers of being so forward, going so far ahead you end up in the desert praising **noallow** monarchies and slave states as beacons of freedom and democracy, while your police hunt witchhunters and the mutilators of little girls in your own cities.

In Australia, Julia Gillard rolled out “Moving Forward,” explaining that the slogan fit because Australians are an optimistic forward-looking people. Which they had to be as their country had suffered the worst economic decline in twenty years. When things are that bad, you might as well look forward and find something to be optimistic about.

The Grenadan Revolution had its own forward-thinking slogans like “Who Controls the Minds of the People Have the Power” and “Forward Ever, Backward Never.” Sadly the revolution ended up going backward when the reactionary running dog capitalists overthrew the Cuban-backed revolutionaries and robbed them of control over the minds of the people.

The Obama campaign has largely adopted both Grenadan slogans, but its control over the minds of the people may prove to be as tenuous as that of the People’s Revolutionary Army over Grenada. The backward view is surprisingly appealing even to Obama supporters who can’t help remembering that there used to be more jobs and more money before the Hope and Change revolution.

Romney might ask you if you are better off now than you were four years ago, but Obama will tell you to forget the past and look forward to the eternal future that is always peeking over the horizon. The mirage of the progressive world of tomorrow, which we can reach over a pile of dead senior citizens, energy saving lightbulbs and multicultural coloring books.

In Maryland, Governor Martin O’Malley, a liberal Democrat, turned a billion dollar surplus into a two billion dollar deficit, and then ran for reelection on what other slogan but, “Moving Maryland Forward.” The people of Maryland have moved on to what else but more billion dollar deficits. That is what you get when you move “Forward”: deficit spending today that will reap dividends in tomorrow’s utopias from officials who can’t be bothered with economics because they’re too busy looking forward to the future.

Progressives do not like looking backward in the rearview mirror. There are too many things there that they would rather not see, like the Great Leap Forward, the Gulags, the ghosts of Five Year Plans and a thousand failed ideologies and dead philosophies taunting them. Forwardism frees them from having to contemplate the unemployment figures or the deficit; there is no past, only the eternal future. Forget your troubles and groove to a new hopeful slogan that promises a better world tomorrow for a hamburger today.

Forwardistan is not some enigmatic place; it’s Lenin’s Russia, Mao’s China, O’Malley’s Maryland and Obama’s America. It’s what happens when you drive leaning forward, because maps and rear view mirrors are for backward-thinking people who lack the courage to take the great leap of faith forward into the economic dead zone of uncontrolled spending and crude control of the economy.

On college campuses, Obama stretches out his hand, urging students to take it and make that great leap forward with him into the future. That is what this election is really about and that is what this year will decide. Do we leap forward with him off the cliff or do we turn back and try to find a better way?

The story of Chinese democracy activist Chen Guangcheng took a bizarre turn this morning. The dissident escaped house arrest and ended up at the US embassy in Beijing, with an injury to his foot in the escape. The US then announced that they had negotiated safe passage to a hospital with the Chinese government, where Chen could be reunited with his family. However, the AP reported a few minutes agothat the US told him that if he didn't leave, the Beijing government would beat his wife to death ... and now he fears for his life:

Blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng says a U.S. official told him that Chinese authorities threatened to beat his wife to death had be not left the American Embassy.

Speaking by phone from his hospital room in Beijing on Wednesday night, a shaken Chen told The Associated Press that U.S. officials relayed the threat from the Chinese side.

Chen, who fled to the embassy six day ago, left under an agreement in which he would receive medical care, be reunited with his family and allowed to attend university in a safe place. He says he now fears for his safety and wants to leave.

Here was the story earlier today, from LifeNews and an earlier report from the AP:

In a new deal between the United States and China, Chen has left to a local hospital and is reportedly under American protection, as U.S officials have guaranteed his safety. U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke escorted Chen, according to an AP report, to the Chaoyang Hospital and, on the way there, Chen called his lawyer, Li Jinsong, who said Chen told him: “‘I’m free. I’ve received clear assurances.’” …

As part of the agreement that ended the fraught, behind-the-scenes standoff, U.S. officials said China agreed to let Mr. Chen receive a medical checkup and be reunited with his family at the hospital; his wife and two children joined him there Wednesday afternoon. He would then be relocated to a safe place in China where he could study at university — all demands activists said Mr. Chen had raised.

Clinton, in a statement, said Mr. Chen’s exit from the embassy “reflected his choices and our values” and said the U.S. would monitor the assurances Beijing gave. “Making these commitments a reality is the next crucial task,” she said.

It doesn’t sound as though Chen feels particularly “free” at the moment. Did the Obama administration sell out Chen to the Beijing government? If so, that sends a chilling message to democracy activists and dissidents around the world about American commitment to freedom, and Obama’s own insistence that he would be on the side of freedom-loving activists.

Obama Kowtow to Chinese Leaders

What a sickening disgrace. How utterly typical of 0bama. Another kowtow to a communist.

How about telling the ChiComs that Chen and his wife and any kids are leaving, that they have US diplomatic immunity and any reprisals against Chen's extended family will be will be met with severe repercussions for US-China relations?

You have to hand it to President Obama and his cabal of re-election strategists; they are masters of illusion. Their newly released Web video and its accompanying campaign slogan, "Forward," are science fiction-level fantastical.

We're all familiar with Obama's penchant for deflecting responsibility and blaming his policy failures on George W. Bush, but after more than three years in office for Obama, it has gone from childish mischief to juvenile delinquency. This is a question for Guinness: Has any other president run for re-election against the record of his retired predecessor?

Indeed, Obama is still feeding us this dodge years beyond its spoil date, apparently hoping we won't realize we have salmonella until he's safely voted in to his second term.

Watch the video. In the words of The Hill's John Easley, "it blames GOP policies for the still-sluggish economy."

It attempts to draw a clear dichotomy between the dark days of the last year of Bush's term and the glorious remedial reign of President Obama, which began in January 2009.

The first period is depicted as one of excessive job losses, the housing and foreclosure crisis, the stock market free fall, and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, with ominous images of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the sinister masterminds of these disasters, strategically placed throughout, for maximum effect.

The second period begins with the inauguration of President Obama, underscoring his heroic agenda -- the one Obama has cited in placing himself among the greatest American presidents -- the stimulus, the GM and Chrysler bailouts, financial reform, the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," bringing the Iraq War to a close and, of course, the killing of Osama bin Laden. Before the video ends, the video dutifully boasts about Obama's signature "accomplishment," Obamacare, going so far as to include the controversial birth control mandate in his plus column. Likewise with his green energy policies.

According to the video, the most polarizing chief executive in the history of the American presidency is not the cause of our current dreadful economic conditions, about which, in any event, the White House is mostly in denial, as we'll see. Nor is Obama to blame for our nearly unprecedented partisan acrimony. No, the root of our problems is obstructionist GOP Republicans, who -- along with their evil media mouthpieces Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck -- "instead of working together to lift America up ... (have waged) a campaign to tear the president down."

But despite the pernicious efforts of the GOP and its loudmouth conservative co-conspirators to thwart President Obama's salutary agenda, Obama has persevered and triumphed. That's right; his record is not one of failure but one of extraordinary achievement against this right-wing hydra and the multifaceted adversity it has hurled at him.

In fact, the White House would have us believe the economy is doing pretty well. "The president's stimulus plan saved up to 4.2 million jobs" and has given us steady economic growth, and the manufacturing sector is going gangbusters.

What this little clip doesn't tell you -- apart from the meaningless and immeasurable metric of "saved jobs," which has now been further diluted to the ludicrous rendering "saved up to" -- is how much these possibly or possibly not saved jobs cost the American taxpayer. It doesn't reveal Obama's miserable record in creating new private-sector jobs or that overall, he has delivered us a net loss of millions of jobs and unemployment at levels consistently 60 percent higher than what economists consider normal.

It doesn't report that taxpayers lost billions on his vaunted auto bailouts or that through his abuses of power, secured creditors were literally cheated out of their money.

The video conveniently fails to mention that Obama has rightfully earned his nickname "The Food Stamp President" with the objectively measurable skyrocketing increases in government dependency payouts during his term, a great portion of which cannot be blamed on the recession, which his policies grossly worsened anyway. It doesn't disclose that Obamacare will cost nearly twice what Obama promised or that Dodd-Frank is likely to exacerbate the very problems it is ostensibly designed to prevent.

The video casually glosses over Obama's real record on green jobs, the wasted billions and the shameless corporatist corruption. It doesn't showcase his gutting of the military or his plans for radical nuclear disarmament.

But the most gaping hole in this propaganda piece is its glaring omission of the debt crisis Obama has engineered, his abdication of leadership in failing to pressure his party's Senate majority to produce a budget -- even a phony, superficial one -- in more than 1,000 days, and his egregious refusal to work on entitlement reform and balancing the budget.

Team Obama is gifted in community organizing, but not even these wizards can re-create reality to make Obama's record appear anywhere north of calamitous failure. This "progressive" president is headed anywhere but forward.

Most characteristic of this preaching [of the Great Leap Forward] was its utopianism, the promise of a bright future just in the offing, "three years of suffering leading to a thousand years of happiness." -- Franz Schurmann writing inIdeology and Organization in Communist China

Forward!

Comrades, you can't make it up. Can you say "campaign blunder"? Or is it a blunder? Is it deliberate? The socialist mind at work in campaign mode?

The Obama campaign has picked a portion of one of the most infamous socialist slogans of 20th century history to use as its own new campaign slogan.

"Forward" is the new Obama slogan, Team Obama borrowing boldly from none other than the late Communist Party of China leader Chairman Mao.

Mao's slogan? "The Great Leap Forward."

Rather than describing this myself, let's take a tour of various descriptions of this wonderful, Communist slogan.

The Great Leap Forward (simplified Chinese: 大跃进; traditional Chinese: 大躍進; pinyin: Dà yuè jìn) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China (CPC), reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern communist society through the process of rapid industrialization and collectivization. Mao Zedong led the campaign based on the Theory of Productive Forces, and intensified it after being informed of the impending disaster from grain shortages.

Chief changes in the lives of rural Chinese included the introduction of a mandatory process of agricultural collectivization, which was introduced incrementally. Private farming was prohibited, and those engaged in it were labeled as counter revolutionaries and persecuted. Restrictions on rural people were enforced through public struggle sessions, and social pressure. Rural industrialization, officially a priority of the campaign, saw "its development … aborted by the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward."[1]

The Great Leap ended in catastrophe, resulting in tens of millions of excess deaths.[2] Estimates of the death toll range from 18 million[3] to 45 million,[4] with estimates by demographic specialists ranging from 18 million to 32.5 million.[3] Historian Frank Dikötter asserts that "coercion, terror, and systematic violence were the very foundation of the Great Leap Forward" and it "motivated one of the most deadly mass killings of human history."[5] In contrast, journals such as the Monthly Review have disputed the reliability of the figures commonly cited, the qualitative evidence of a "massive death toll", and Mao's complicity in those deaths which occurred.[6]

The years of the Great Leap Forward in fact saw economic regression, with 1958 through 1961 being the only years between 1953 and 1983 in which China's economy saw negative growth.

If you prefer the video version of the Great Leap Forward, here's a video summary. At 5:08 in the video the film tells us that the Great Leap Forward resulted in famine and starvation for the Chinese people.

Perhaps one of the most interesting video takes on The Great Leap Forward is from a PBS series called Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism.

Not only is the film well done, it was posted (in segments) on YouTube in 2009 by one "CE Hitchens." That's right -- the late Christopher Hitchens, the one-time left-winger who, in the years after 9/11, developed a profound antipathy for the totalitarian left.

At 5:24 in the Hitchens post (linked here) the segment on Mao and the Communist takeover of China begins, with a discussion of Mao's promise of "the iron rice bowl" -- life-long economic security. There was a price, as the film makes vividly clear.

At 7:22, Dr. Merle Goldman, a Professor Emerita of History at Boston University and an author of several works on China, introduces the segment on The Great Leap Forward. The segment continues here in another Hitchens post, with Dr. Goldman saying of the Great Leap Forward:

"It is estimated that this utopian idea led to the death of 30-40 million Chinese peasants."

The film's narrator picks up after that, saying:

A century earlier Karl Marx had dreamt of the final stage of socialism. A society of complete human fulfillment where a person might hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon and write poetry in the evening. He called it Communism. In Russia and China the word had come to mean something very different.

Now. Let's work our way through some of the thinking that was behind "The Great Leap Forward" and see if there are any similarities to the people who have now chosen "Forward" as their slogan.

• Poetry and Artists: Think of that last quote, the one from the film's narrator talking about the final stage of socialism enabling people to spend their time writing poetry -- and how this utopian idea, a fundamental building block of the Great Leap Forward, had wound up wreaking havoc on the Chinese people.

Where have we heard this recently? And from whom?

That's right. Here in this clip of Nancy Pelosi when she was Speaker of the House and busy jamming Obamacare through the House. Said Pelosi:

Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or, eh, a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance, or that people could start a business and be entrepreneurial and take risk but not [be] job-locked because a child has asthma or someone in the family is bipolar. You name it. Any condition is job-blocking.

• Submission and Control: The narrator of the film says this about the Great Leap Forward's promise of economic security and the "iron rice bowl":

But the price was submission. The party would soon control everything. The books people read. The clothes they wore. Even who they married. And how many children they had.

Submission. The party controls what people read. The clothes they are to wear.

What battles over submission and control have we been fighting in this country recently?

-- Controlling your health care: Obamacare:Here'sMichigan Democrat John Dingell talking about the need to "control the people" with health care.

-- Controlling what you listen to on the radio:Getting Rush Limbaugh off the air: Here's a video from the left-wing group Change.org demanding Rush be removed from radio.

-- Controlling by Class Warfare: And of course, last but certainly not least is the idea of controlling Americans by class warfare -- pitting the rich against the middle class against the poor. As President Obama displays in this highlight reel.

As if this weren't bad enough, here's those pesky National Socialists of Germany (aka the Nazis) with one of their favorite Hitler Youth marching songs, titled "Vorwärts! Vorwärts!" -- translation: Forward! Forward!

One could go on and on and on here.

Suffice to say, politically speaking this is one of the dumbest moves any campaign, much less the campaign of a candidate who is regularly accused of being socialist, could ever come up with.

Unless, of course, this slogan is in fact a genuine reflection of the Obama campaign's thinking.

You would be justified in thinking that if once-professed Communist Van Jones didn't wind up on the Obama White House staff by accident, choosing an Obama campaign slogan long identified with every socialist nightmare in the history of the 20th century isn't an accident either.

Once upon a time there was another president running for re-election. With an entirely different slogan. His campaign even used the word "forward" in its famous commercial -- but in an entirely different setting, with an entirely different meaning.

It was called "Morning in America." And it closed by asking, "Why would we ever want to return to where we were, less than four short years ago?" A particularly pointed question right this minute as the similarities between the Jimmy Carter-era over which Reagan triumphed -- and the Obama-era of today -- are stark.

The difference between a Reagan slogan and an Obama slogan lifted from Chairman Mao could not possibly be clearer.